"First" impressions

First impressions can be telling.  I say "first" because I have actually been to Wisconsin a handful of times (1 cross country road trip with the family, 2 Wildlife Society conferences, and a job interview), which is rather surprising since it's not exactly on the way to anything, nor is it adjacent to the states I have frequented for my 30 years.  Not to mention, the University of Wisconsin Badgers are a great rival of my Penn State Nittany Lions...

Hating on U of Wisconsin @ PSU, circa 2004

So after 3 weeks in WI (nearly one of which was in WY, to be fair), here are my first impressions. Disclaimer: I am seriously generalizing (and perhaps exaggerating) a little here.



1.  They like to drive fast on rough roads.

I was wondering how the driving scene might unfold.  I learned to drive in a high density, aggressive atmosphere.  There was no room for mistakes as a new driver, and people were not afraid to tell you did something wrong (or just simply ticked them off for some unapparent reason).  I also have experience driving in some really rural areas in Pennsylvania and Virginia.  Green Bay has a population of ~100,000 plus a few surrounding villages that function as mini suburbs (e.g., we live in Howard, pop. ~18,000).  It's not a very large city (in fact, the smallest city with an NFL football team- more to come on that later).  The surrounding area is largely rural farmland.  I was interested to see how WI drivers took to their roads.

Surprisingly, they drive really fast.  Not aggressively, like NJ drivers.  They just want to move fast- 55 MPH means about 70.  35 means about 50.  I am not a slow driver, but they are blowing around me leaving me in the dust (my VA license plates probably do not help in this situation).  This becomes an even greater feat when you realize how badly the roads are impacted by winter (I am assuming).  The roads in Green Bay are full of cracks, potholes, and craters, but they just blow right over them.  Not to mention, there are no vehicle inspections in the state, so many vehicles are completely rusted out (again, from winter, I am assuming) and falling apart.  This (presumably) winter wear and tear doesn't bode well for my 18 month old car...at least it will be garage-kept now!


2.  They love their Green Bay Packers and Friday Night Fish Fry.

I knew this in advance, of course, but I like it.  I can identify with loving your team and LIVING it in your daily life.  Walmart is full of GBP t-shirt-wearing people (and a whole room of merchandise, should you need to add to your collection), cars are stickered and license-plated out, kids have GBP backpacks and sneakers...and its only July.  In fact, you have an up-close-and-personal view of Lambeau Field from the city's shopping mall.  It doesn't matter what month of the year it is, or whether it's football season or not, you love your team, win or lose.  I can relate to that, and since I am NFL-unaffiliated, I am happy to jump on the bandwagon (more to come on this!).  I might even get to bring some high school colors back out again since green and yellow clothing is suddenly "in" again (Go Pioneers!).

And who could resist a Friday Night Fish Fry at Titletown Brewing Company on the Fox River while watching the Milwaukee Brewers game?

Delicious perch fish fry platter at Titletown Brewing Co., Green Bay

3.  It's all about beer, cheese, and processed meats.

I have never seen anything like it.  The grocery stores have a whole aisles and sometimes whole sections dedicated to these three food/beverage groups.  You have hundreds of choices of cheese, produced right here in Wisconsin.  Would you like, shredded, block, string, flavored curds, sliced, cubed....you name it, they got it.  Buffalo cheese curds?  Black pepper shallot garlic?  Absolutely.  Don't you dare pick up that "ordinary" Kraft or Sargento.  By the way, if you don't know what a cheese curd is (you should, shame on you), it is chunks of extremely fresh cheese.  When you eat a good curd, it's supposed to squeak against your teeth (true story, oddly interesting).  In addition to the diverse cheese selection, we can also get Wisconsin cream cheese, sour cream, butter, and milk.

The processed meat selection is amazing- hundreds of brands and flavors of gourmet hot dogs, bratwursts, summer sausages, etc.  During one trip, I bought mushroom swiss bratwurst patties.  I just had to try them (they were really good on the grill!).  I haven't been to McDonalds yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if they serve a bratwurst sandwich and/or fried cheese curds!

Beer deserves its own blog sometime in the future, but needless to say, a number of varieties and brands are produced right here.  I even had a Leine's (Leinenkugel for us Easterners) ON TAP at a baseball game!  At least 5 microbreweries right here in Green Bay, so we have a lot of work to do.  Not to mention, we also have a couple wineries on the list to check out.

The processed meats aisle at Piggly Wiggly

4.  That accent.  Don't cha know?

I haven't mastered my authentic imitation yet (I'm working on it), but it's definitely distinct.  A little Fargo (the movie), a little Canadian, lots of high inflection.  I was telling someone the other day that it always sounds like Upper Midwesterners are quite chipper, despite what they might be saying to you.  The "oooh" sound is drawn out and inflected up.  E.g., "Minnesoooohta, toooh.  Don't cha know?"  I don't think it's hard to understand, but I have noticed less comprehension of OUR "accent" so far (Scott claims we do not have an accent, and the people here say we do).  Not sure how this dialect will mesh with my Yankee Southern dialect....(Scott doesn't have an accent, remember?).

Wikipedia (weak source, I know) has an enlightening and very confusing description of Upper Midwest American English.


5.  Tons of farm fresh produce.

Wisconsin is known as "America's Dairyland" as printed on our new license plates once we acquire them.  So, no surprise about the dairy products...but there's more!  We visited the Madison farmers market last weekend during a trip down for Scott's work and to pick up some of his things he had stored at a friend's place there on the trip up.  The farmers market was set up around the capital building downtown, and it was huge.  They had absolutely everything you could imagine- lots of farm fresh produce, honey, syrup, berries, breads, CHEESE (the fried cheese samples were excellent!), and so much more.  We bought lettuce, broccoli, and yellow (green) beans for a total of $3...all delicious!  Good produce has been available in many of the places I have lived, but you don't get this scale of production and variety in the Appalachian Mountains.  I already have gotten pretty darn close to creating an entire meal with beverage and condiments that is almost entirely from Wisconsin.  Looking forward to checking out the Green Bay farmers market sometime soon.

State capital, Madison, WI

We have also heard about some fantastic cherries in our neighboring county.  Door County is the peninsula in between Green Bay and Lake Michigan and apparently very famous for its picturesque coastlines, quaint lakeshore towns, and "Cape Cod-like" atmosphere.  Hopefully we'll get to visit soon!

Apparently this blog turned out to be mostly about food...very different and tasty up here in Wisconsin!

Jeremiah was a Bullfrog

A little bit of a hiatus on the blog. Disclaimer: I was traveling for 5 days for a Land Ethic Leaders workshop that I was invited to attend several months ago at the Murie Center in Moose, Wyoming inside Grand Teton National Park. This blog is about the Midwest, so I won't tell you how great it was to meet other conservation professionals from around the US and Canada, or how beautiful the Teton Range was, or about the wildlife I saw in Yellowstone, or how cool it was to stay on Olaus and Mardy Murie's ranch and have conversations about wilderness on their front porch, or how much I remembered from when I was there at 9 years old, 21 years ago to this month...Despite the very short 4 full days I spent in WI before jetsetting, it was well worth the adventure (official group photo on the Murie's porch is below).

Meanwhile...our first opportunity for a spontaneous adventure came up yesterday!

I saw an ad on Facebook (of all places) for a special promotion at the Green Bay Bullfrogs baseball game the next night against the LaCrosse Loggers and just had to check it out. It turns out that the Frogs are in the Northwoods League, a summer league for collegiate players. Their field is located at Joannes Park adjacent to (or part of?) Green Bay-East High School about 10 minutes away. The ad was for the "Wisconsin special" ticket and meal package, which consisted of 2 third base line seats, 2 brats, 2 ears of griled corn, 2 WI beers, and an order of cheese curds for $26. The WI special did not disappoint! Despite a little out-of-towner confusion on arrival about where to park and where to claim our food, we had a great time and hope to catch another game soon. The Christmas in July theme added to the ambiance (see Jeremiah the Bullfrog below).

 

P.S. Happy Birthday, Dad! 

Moving In

The move in process went about as smoothly as it could have.  Scott and I both arrived to Green Bay on Friday the 11th.  He had been working in Madison (the state capital) at his agency's headquarters for his first two weeks.  We weren't supposed to get keys to the apartment until the next day, but once I stopped in the office to ask where we could have the trailer parked later that afternoon, the office staff kindly let us do our paperwork early so we could get the keys that afternoon (and avoid staying in a hotel).  The trailer showed up not too long after.  The apartment was probably the cleanest rental I have ever moved into, and the office staff was very nice and on top of things.  I was really happy with how accommodating they were went since we found the complex online and submitted the application and deposit remotely.

The complex is located on the West side of Green Bay, in the Village of Howard.  It's largely residential neighborhoods until you leave the city limits and head back out into farmland.  I will post some photos once we get settled a little more, but you can see some complex photos here to get the idea.  We have a 2 bedroom, 1 bath apartment on the first floor.  Excluding the basement at our townhouse in Christiansburg, it isn't too much smaller for us and has good storage space.  The apartment comes with a one car garage in a detached building, and we opted to add a second garage to keep our cars safe and warm over the winter!

On Saturday the 12th, we started unloading the trailer.  We had to park the trailer off to the side in the closest parking lot in the complex, so there was a bit of walk to get from the trailer to our unit.  But at least no stairs!  I had booked movers to come at 1 PM to help, especially with the furniture- but, naturally, I didn't proactively call to confirm, and they didn't show.  I called to follow up and after a bunch of calls back and forth, they were able to find a crew to come by at about 3:30 PM.  The two guys (Matt and Tony) did good work, and with all four of us working on it, we made good progress in 2 hours.  We had the trailer unloaded by around 6 PM.

A few of our furniture items got knicked and dinged along the ride, but for the most part everything made it (except for 2 lamp shades and one cheap particleboard bookcase).  Now comes the fun part- unpacking everything!

Once the move stories are over and done with, I hope the blog can turn to more exciting and leisurely adventures!

Life is a highway

Because of the timing of the move, we had to make the drive separately.  I made my ride over 2 days after tying up loose ends in Virginia.  I left on Thursday at around noon, gave my tearful goodbye to Blacksburg after 8 years, and made the 7 hour drive to Indianapolis.  The first half of the ride was very scenic and was on a rural highway, so it was almost pleasant, despite the loaded down car.  I drove through the Appalachian Mountains to Charleston, WV (bye, mountains!) and on to Dayton, OH.  Once I got to Dayton, the rest of the trip was on interstate roads, so the pace and the traffic picked up significantly.  By the time I got to Indianapolis, I was ready for dinner and some rest at the hotel.  The next morning, I departed for my 6.5 hour drive heading northwest toward Chicago, and entered the Central Time Zone.  I had driven through Chicago maybe twice before, so I knew it was going to be a challenge.  The traffic was pretty heavy, and of course they don't accept EZ Pass (shout out, PA and NJ!), but rather the obscure I-Pass (an Illinois exclusive?).  So, every 10 miles or so, you have to literally exit the 5-lane highway to the right, and roll through the tollbooths to pay a real human being in cash.  Interestingly enough, each toll amount is different.  So you never know what you are going to be paying!  After the first two, I ended up just driving with my change purse on my lap and picking the longest line so I could fumble around for close to the right amount.  If I counted correctly, there were at least 5 tolls.  Made the time go by quickly though!

Needless to say, when I saw this...I was pretty relieved!

I stopped in at the welcome center and picked up some literature about Wisconsin and a road map to keep in the car.  The rest area was so nice I decided to take a break for a snack.  Then, onward for about 30 minutes to Milwaukee.  I had spent a week in MKE for a conference in October, of course not realizing that I would be moving a short distance away just a few months later.  From there, the highway narrowed down back to a 2-lane and I headed northbound through the quiet farmland along the western shore of Lake Michigan.  An hour and a half later, I passed the city limit sign for Green Bay!  Where is it...?

Eventually, I did enter the city after a few more miles of farms.  I crossed over the Bay itself and looked to the left and got my first glimpse of the Fox River and Lambeau Field!  Wish I could have taken more photos of the ride, but not too easy to do when driving by yourself.  More to come on the move and the new apartment in the next blog!

Green Bay or bust!

So as most of our blog readers know, Scott accepted a new job with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources as a Forest Products Service Specialist in Green Bay.  His region includes the southeastern part of the state in between the cities of Madison, Milwaukee, and Green Bay, so he will often be traveling within a couple of hours of home. Since he had to be out in Wisconsin on June 30 to start working and we had some challenges finding a place to live online, I stayed behind in Virginia to manage the packing and transportation of belongings.  I would be heading to WI by myself later, so we decided that shipping freight would be a better option than driving a truck myself while towing my car (not fun!).  Here's how it works- the company delivers a half-size tractor trailer (28 ft) to your driveway, you load it, they come and pick it up, hook it up to a second trailer at the distribution center, and then transport your stuff to your destination for you to unload.  Despite the significant distance (shortest route to GB is 854 mi to be exact), the cost came in at about the same as a large rental truck plus gas. 

Thankfully, my mom and dad came down to help and I planned a packing party (complete with beer and pizza) to entice friends to come over and help load the trailer (Thanks, guys!).  I sold our washer and dryer on Craigslist since our apartment would already have them, as well as 3 other pieces of furniture that we were not really using.  We had about a day and half to get everything else loaded up, and it just barely fit in the trailer thanks to my dad's excellent packing and stacking abilities! Thunderstorms threatened and it was pretty hot, but we got everything packed and loaded just prior to the 4th Holiday and sent the truck on its way.  Then it was time for cleaning, remaining business in town, and goodbyes.


Around the time when the idea for this blog came to fruition, I had several conversations about regional dialects and accents. This topic often comes up in areas where you have people from widely different backgrounds coming together in one place, such as a university. I was recently told that my background isn't immediately clear from speech because of my "hybrid" accent meshing South Jersey/Philadelphia-Central Pennsylvania-southwest Virginia pronunciations and phrases. That discussion led me to our blog title- we were raised as Yankees (although we didn't know as much until we moved to VA...), spent most of our 20s as wannabe Southerners, and now we find ourselves learning how to be Midwesterners in our 30s ("doncha know?).

Here goes nothing, ya'll.